


what flowers are at my feet

by mardisoir



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood and Injury, Multi, Non-Binary Jean Prouvaire, Other, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 08:03:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12552936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardisoir/pseuds/mardisoir
Summary: The first time the witch speaks, it’s to offer a favour.





	what flowers are at my feet

The first time the witch speaks, it’s to offer a favour.  
  
The forest is dark around them, damp hanging heavy in the air and clinging to the grass. The wood in the fire pit hisses and spits like an angry cat, refusing to catch alight no matter how Claquesous tends to it, feeding it wound strips of dried grass and tinder.  
  
The witch has been watching them all silently for a full day’s travel. Their silence is eerie but not unwelcome, Montparnasse prefers it to the furious protests he’d expected, is grateful to not have to bring out the vicious metal gag they’d procured from the witch hunter three towns ago.  
  
The gag sits like a shameful secret in the bottom of his satchel, wrapped in white cloth. It’s old and looks as though it’s been well used in the past. The witch has a soft looking mouth. Although he'd do it, if he had to, he’s glad not to mar it with metal.

It’s a shock when the witch speaks, breaking the lull that’s fallen over the camp. 

“I can help you with that, if you want.”   
  
All four of them start a little in surprise at the sound of the unfamiliar voice.

Gueulemer is the first to recover. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” he scowls, stood looming over them all with his arms folded atop his axe. “We let you get close to that fire and you’ll burn us all alive.”  
  
The witch’s lips curl and Montparnasse feels the cold of the evening sharpen, a shiver runs down his spine.  
  
“I could offer you my word that I won’t,” the witch speaks again and their voice is the wind rustling skeletal branches, leathery wings in the dark, smoke hovering in the air of the clearing.  
  
Babet scoffs from his perch on a jagged stone outcropping, “We know better than to trust the word of a witch. Liars and deceivers, all of you.”

“Witches don’t lie,” the witch lies. “You’re thinking of demons.”  
  
Claquesous drops his flint and curses, blood dark on his fingers where he’d missed the firesteel and caught flesh.  
  
“Witches are not the ones known for burnings, either,” the witch says, and although none of them are close enough to see exactly how it happens, the fire finally springs to life.  
  
Bright flames reflect in the witch’s eyes, glinting off their hair and the brass shackles Montparnasse had fastened around their wrists to stem their magic. The metal had smoked like a brand when it touched them, but the witch hadn’t screamed or tried to cast any spells on him. Their skin had been warm and soft under his hands, nothing like the cold of a corpse or the leathery scales of a snake.  
  
Not all the stories were true, it seemed.  
  
“Hold your tongue, witch,” Babet warns, “or Montparnasse will make you.”

“I have a name,” the witch says, smiling their strange smile his way. 

Montparnasse’s people have names for witches too, but none that he’d want to call one to their face.  
  
“I thought your kind didn’t give out names,” Gueulemer says, suspicious.  
  
“You don’t know very much about witches, do you?”  
  
Something in the way the witch speaks unnerves him. Their tone is indulgent, like an adult entertaining the whims of a child.  
  
“What’s your name, then?” he asks, needled and no doubt playing directly into their tightly bound hands.  
  
The witch’s smile widens, “You may call me Jehan.”

 

Jehan is strange, even for a witch.

They make no fuss about being chained and dragged from their home. They issue no threats, nor any pleas. They offer no bargains.

When the group travels they sit contentedly astride Montparnasse’s stolen white gelding, long fingers weaving delicate braids into the horses mane. They sleep close beside him at night, forgoing a bed roll for the thickest patches of forest moss they can find.

Sometimes in the evenings when they all gather around the fire, they sing.   
  
Claquesous had silenced them with a knife to their throat the first time they did it, fearing they were weaving some enchantment to put them all to sleep.  
  
“If I wanted to escape while you were sleeping,” the witch had pointed out, “I would have walked away that very first night.”  
  
Montparnasse, who had stayed awake all through the night in question to watch the witch in their midst and make sure they did no such thing, was not convinced. But no harm came to any of them, and Jehan has a pleasant voice, so they let it go.  
  
Sometimes Jehan sings in a strange language that makes the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Sometimes when they sing, the birds fall silent. Sometimes they sing along, in a harsh crescendo of sound. Sometimes they hum haunting melodies that rise and fall like the tide.

Witch songs are quite beautiful, as it turns out.  
  
The skin around their shackles is ruddy and inflamed, but the witch barely seems to feel it. On the seventh day of travelling together, Montparnasse offers them ointment from his pack, guilt and tolerance born of familiarity pricking at him.  
  
“Thank you,” Jehan smiles at him, “but I can’t reach.”  
  
The cuffs are solid brass inlaid with hazel wood, joined close together with a short loop of chain and carved with foreign sigils. Montparnasse wears the key on a leather cord around his neck.  
  
“I can do it,” he offers despite himself, eyes lingering on the angry rawness of their thin wrists.  
  
They’re sitting together beside the fire, almost alone. Gueulemer is sleeping already on the other side of the camp, Claquesous cleaning and sharpening his knives beside him. They’re both almost out of earshot. Babet has gone to the small stream they passed earlier to refill their water skins and clean the pots they used at dinner.  
  
Jehan tilts their head, “That would be a kindness.”  
  
Montparnasse holds out his hand and the witch offers him theirs. The ointment is cool to the touch and smells of herbs. Jehan could probably tell him exactly what was in it and where the plants had grown, what phase the moon was in when they were picked, if there was something stronger he could use instead.  
  
He doesn’t ask though, just carefully rubs it into the skin around the metal, head bent low so he can see what he’s doing in the dim light.  
  
“You haven’t told me what you want,” Jehan says in a low voice, and when he looks up at them they’re watching him with an unreadable expression.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Most people,” Jehan says, “well. Most people don’t steal witches. But if they did, it would be because they wanted something. Some boon, some spell. A curse for an enemy, a charm to win over a lover.”  
  
Montparnasse looks away from them, but that only draws his attention back to the feel of their skin, how delicate their hands look against his own.  
  
“What is it that you want?”  
  
He rubs the last of the ointment in, and then he’s just holding Jehan’s hands in his own. If he asked for power, for riches, would they grant that wish? That’s what this was all about, after all.  
  
Montparnasse thinks of his home, of the streets he grew up on, the people he left behind there. He thinks of the wealthy men he’s always envied, the way they treat poor folk like they’re lower than cattle. He thinks of Éponine, of Gavroche. He thinks of the things he’d do to help them. The things he’s already done. He looks at the fetters biting into the skin of Jehan’s wrists.  
  
“I want things to be better,” he says, letting go of Jehan’s hands and turning away.

 

Everyone knows what the presence of a witch means for good, honest folk.   
  
The tales are told around every table, dire warnings of hex signs, of sorcery. When a witch walks among you, the milk spoils in the jug, crops wither, livestock sickens, babies die in their cradles. Husbands turn away from their wives, young women are spirited away to the forest and never return. A darkness follows wherever their presence is felt.  
  
Patron-Minette had been prepared for bad luck when they resolved to capture a witch. Montparnasse knew what to expect because it dogged his steps already. Born in a bad year into a land already fraught with war and poverty, Montparnasse knows too well what it is to feel cursed.  
  
But with Jehan at their side, things seem easier than ever before. The fire always lights, no matter how wet the wood is. The horses never stumble, even on the narrowest, rooted paths. The food stays good for longer, and they never seem to run low. Water tastes sweeter in the clear creeks and pools that crop up often along their route. The weather is mild, they’re ahead of schedule, they’re sleeping well at night.  
  
Too well, perhaps.

Four wanted criminals and a witch should be a fair match for any of the thieves and bandits that occasionally haunt the forests, but none of them had counted on Thénardier bringing the law down upon them.

The bounty hunter crashes into their camp in the early hours, chaos at his heels.

Gueulemer swings into action with a roar, seizing a still burning branch from the fire and wielding it like a club. Claquesous moves like a shadow at his back, knives flashing in the moonlight. Montparnasse can’t see Babet, but as he rolls to his feet a man goes down with an arrow in his throat, so he’s certainly nearby.

Montparnasse takes up his sword and leaps into the fray, but they’re badly outnumbered and poorly equipped for a stand off. Someone, probably Claquesous, kicks over the pot of water above the fire and it splutters and dies, sending up clouds of smoke and plunging the campsite into darkness.   
  
Men stumble back and forth, tripping, swearing and flailing blades about like fools. Montparnasse tackles Jehan, knocking them both out of the range of an enemy blade, and rolls them out of the way of trampling feet, losing his sword in the process.

“If you take them off, I can help you,” Jehan says urgently. They’re pressing their hands against his chest, the metal shackles digging in through his thin sleep shirt.  
  
“You could just run,” Montparnasse stalls, looking for a weapon, but there’s nothing around him but leaves.  
  
“Witches keep their word,” Jehan swears, and that wasn’t what he meant, but it doesn’t matter either way because if he doesn’t risk it, they’ll all die.

Montparnasse has been applying the ointment to Jehan’s wrists every night since that first time, but they’ve never healed, the irritation has never lessened. When he unlocks the cuffs with fumbling fingers, he finally sees why. The metal falls away revealing deep burns beneath, almost to the bone. 

“Close your eyes,” Jehan says, their face suddenly close to his as they brush a kiss to his forehead. Before he can react, they pull away and there’s a searing flash of light.   
  
Jehan speaks words in the same language they sometimes sing in, but the guttural, discordant sounds are miles apart from their sweet songs. The air around them crackles with energy, behind his eyelids Montparnasse sees dancing shapes, hears shrieks of pain and fear.

The silence that falls only seconds later is unnatural. The forest itself seems hollowed out, empty of life. No birds call, the wind is still, nothing rustles the undergrowth aside from Montparnasse himself as he hauls himself to his feet.

In the early dawn light he can see the camp is destroyed, their meagre belongings scattered across the ground. The horses wheel and snort at their tethers, spooked. It’s a miracle they’re still there at all.  
  
Every single one of Thénardiers men has vanished, along with the man himself. Patron-Minette have seen some strange sights in their time, but nothing like this.  
  
“Where’s the witch,” Gueulemer asks, blood in his teeth and on his fists, not all of it his own.  
  
“Did you see what they did?” Claquesous asks, pale beneath his mask.  
  
Babet appears from the tree line, clutching his bow like a talisman. “You shouldn’t have let them go,” he says. “You’ve doomed us.”  
  
“They gave their word,” Montparnasse realises he’s shaking. “They said they wouldn’t leave.”  
  
“If you truly believe that, you’re an even bigger fool than I imagined.”

Claquesous sets to cleaning Gueulemer’s injuries while Babet works to gather their things from where they’ve been kicked about. 

Montparnasse goes searching for Jehan.   
  
He was right, they didn’t run. They’re standing under some trees a short ways from the path, near his discarded satchel. They’re turned slightly away, holding something just out of sight. When Montparnasse gets closer, he realises what it is.  
  
The gag looks monstrous in their hands, vicious metal and sharp tearing edges. Jehan handles it cautiously, like a thing that could bite.  
  
“I wouldn't have used it,” Montparnasse says, and he hopes they hear the truth in his voice.  
  
“No,” Jehan’s voice is a gentle breeze through long grass, the hushed whisper of a spring breaking through rocks. “I don’t believe you would have.”  
  
The gag slips through their fingers to fall at their feet, where the brass shackles gleam in the dirt. Montparnasse pulls the key over his head and holds it out.  
  
“Whatever happens,” he says, “Whatever you choose to do, I’m glad I met you.”  
  
Jehan looks at him then, the whites of their eyes too wide and too bright. “Are you setting me free?”  
  
“You’re already free,” he takes their hand and presses the key into it. “Forgive me.”  
  
Jehan looks at the little brass key, such an innocuous thing, and back at Montparnasse’s face.  
  
The cord feels heavier than it ever did before when they loop it back around his neck.

They bury the gag and the shackles deep in the earth, away from anything that’s growing. When he’s finished filling in the hole, mud smeared across his cheek and underneath his fingernails, Jehan finally smiles. 

 

They continue on because there’s little other option, but things have changed between them.  
  
Jehan still rides in front of Montparnasse, still sings, still sleeps on a bed of moss at his side, but they’re not a prisoner anymore, and it shows.  
  
Watching them, the way they turn their face to the sun, the way they move through the trees when the branches are too thick to pass on the horses, there’s a lightness that was absent before. It’s difficult to look away, and Montparnasse finds he doesn’t want to.

“Where is it that we’re going?” Jehan asks one evening, watching Montparnasse poke unenthusiastically at a cup of thin barley stew. It’s the first time they’ve asked, seeming content enough to accompany their captors unquestioned until now.

“To depose a tyrant,” Montparnasse tells them, putting the spoon aside and leaning back on his bedding.   
  
Jehan’s eyes sparkle in the dark and they lean forward eagerly, sensing a story. “Ah, so it’s a noble quest you’re on.”  
  
“You could say that.”  
  
“And what role does a witch play in your great deeds?”  
  
“An important one,” he hedges with a smile.  
  
Jehan hums and looks up at the stars overhead, “What happens after you depose the tyrant?”  
  
Montparnasse reaches across and plucks a stray leaf from Jehan’s hair, twirling it between his fingers. “We live happily ever after, of course.”

Babet corners him the next morning as they’re packing up to move on and catches hold of him with fingers that are bitingly tight on his upper arm. 

“What are you doing?”  
  
“What do you mean?” Montparnasse tries to pull away, but Babet pursues him.  
  
“Don’t think I can’t see what’s going on,” he snarls. “That witch has ensnared you, and you’ve let them.”  
  
“Babet,” Montparnasse throws off the other man’s grip. “Do not mistake me, I haven’t forgotten our purpose.”  
  
Babet frowns, eyes searching his face. Whatever he sees there must reassure him, because he nods and steps back. “Good, see that you don’t.”  
  
He hadn’t thought that Jehan had overheard, but they mention it that afternoon. They’re washing their clothes in the shallows of the fast flowing river they’ve settled near, Montparnasse is swearing to himself as he scrubs at a tenacious bloodstain with a handful of sand.  
  
“They don’t trust me,” Jehan says, bare feet immersed in the cold water as though they can’t feel the temperature. Perhaps they can’t.  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Your friends.”  
  
Montparnasse gives up and throws the shirt he’s washing aside. “They don’t trust anyone,” he tells them, not certain why he’s making excuses.  
  
“What is it that they’re afraid I’ll do?”  
  
Montparnasse sits back on his heels and watches the evening sunlight play on the surface of the river. “Witches can do all manner of things.”  
  
“Such as?”  
  
“The blackest of arts,” he teases. “Witches drive livestock into frothing madness and poison well water with a glance. They ride broomsticks across the sky when the moon is dark. They be-spell good men and lure them into devilry, until twisted horns grow from their foreheads and their hearts turn black as coal.”  
  
Jehan laughs and it’s the clear ringing of silver bells. Montparnasse stares, enraptured.  
  
There are stories, of course, of what happens to men who lie with witches. All of them end badly.  
  
When Jehan leans over and kisses him, Montparnasse forgets every word.  
  
“No horns,” Jehan says against his mouth, clever fingers combing through his hair. “I must be losing my touch.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Montparnasse tumbles them down on the river back and kisses them again. “Feels like sorcery to me.”  
  
Afterwards, when they are lying in each others arms, Montparnasse traces his fingers down their neck, their chest, the curve of their ribs.  
  
“If you’re looking for witch marks,” Jehan says, breath catching as he bites lightly at their hipbone, “you won’t find any.”  
  
“Mm, so says the witch,” he smiles up at them. “I had best be thorough, don't you think? To make sure.”  
  
Jehan’s laughter rings out across the water.

 

It’s freak chance that undoes them in the end.

They’re so close to their goal, taking their first careful steps onto the lands of the man they seek to defeat, unseen and unheard of.  
  
Montparnasse has planned this moment for years.

He hadn't counted on there being an entire regiment of guardsmen lying in wait for them.  
  
The patrols nearly catch them on the first night they venture out of the safety of the forest. There are witch hunters amongst their number, distinguishable by their bright brass armour and the blood red standards they carry that mimic pyres.  
  
Alongside the lead hunter rides Thénardier, and the sight of him is like a fist to the gut.  
  
Montparnasse turns on Jehan who is crouching beside him, hiding them from view with magic as they spy on the guards.

“I thought you killed them!”  
  
“I just sent them away, so we’d be safe,” Jehan says, wringing their hands. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“What kind of a witch are you,” Gueulemer mutters, “can’t even kill a useless sack of shit like Thénardier.”

Jehan sighs, “You really don’t know anything about witches.”

They retreat back into the forest to plan and Babet sends Montparnasse and Claquesous out to keep watch.  
  
It’s a shout that rouses them a few hours later, but it comes from behind, not ahead where the patrols are.

Montparnasse runs back towards the camp, Claquesous at his side, and stumbles to a halt at the sight playing out before him.

Babet has Jehan on their knees, a sharp brass knife he’s never seen before at their throat.  
  
“What are you doing?” his hand goes automatically to the sword at his waist, but Gueulemer steps forward defensively and Claquesous catches hold of him before he can draw the weapon.

“You heard what the fortune teller said,” Claquesous’s eyes are cold, “you know the cost.”  
  
“The life of a witch,” Montparnasse says and Jehan looks at him, their eyes wide and pained. When he makes no further move to help them they crumple in Babet’s grip, mouth shaping an unspoken denial.

“We’ll tell them the witch cast a spell on us,” Babet presses the knife point into the hollow under Jehan’s jaw. “They’ll take us into the castle, and that will give us our chance to act.”

“Why wouldn’t they simply lock us up too?” Montparnasse protests.  
  
“Because,” Gueulemer says, “we’ve got a real witch. Thénardier saw them do magic, he’s our alibi.”  
  
“This is the answer,” Babet’s says, heavy with resolve. “This is what was meant to happen.”  
  
Musichetta’s words ring in his ears, but Montparnasse never thought it would be this difficult to see it through. None of them could have predicted Jehan.

“You’ll regret this,” the witch promises weakly, but it’s a warning more than a threat. “Montparnasse, please. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Montparnasse can’t speak. There might be another way, but if there is he can’t think of it. 

It doesn’t matter, in the end, because that’s when the guard finds them.

Jehan catches Montparnasse’s gaze as they’re lead away, and the betrayal on their face is as sharp as a blade.  
  
The guard has little interest in the word of a group of outlaws, despite what Gueulemer might have thought, and Thénardier holds no loyalty to them. In fact he delights in their downfall and makes no attempt to defend them, instead telling how they aligned themselves with the witch and must surely have learned something of their wicked arts themselves to elude the authorities for so long.  
  
Patron-Minette are separated and incarcerated without ceremony, almost as if they were never truly a threat to be concerned with. The guards take great pleasure in beating them bloody regardless, and Thénardier in particular relishes his role as doomsayer when he tells how all five of them are to be burned alive in the town square for treason and witchcraft.

Montparnasse laughs when he hears that, which upsets the guards, and by the time he’s left alone on his thin pallet of straw he barely has the strength to roll over and prop himself up against the cold stone walls.

He drifts between sleep and wakefulness, wondering how it will feel to burn.  
  
Jehan appears before his cell in the space between seconds, as if they’d stepped out of the air itself. Montparnasse doesn’t waste time questioning how they slipped their chains, he knows Jehan is more powerful than they let on.  
  
“Did you see this coming?” he asks, and the words taste of iron and salt on his tongue.  
  
“Witches can’t see the future,” Jehan has their arms folded around themself. “You’re thinking of fortune tellers.”  
  
Montparnasse wipes blood from his lips. “I’m not sure I believe in fortune tellers any more.”  
  
Jehan steps closer to the door of his cell and the light from the narrow window casts shadows across their face. “Why did you do this?”  
  
“It was the only way,” he can’t look them in the eye. “The life of a witch, it was the only thing they said would work.”

“But you had it already,” Jehan’s voice breaks when they speak, “I would have helped you, I asked you what you wanted. My life was yours from the moment I laid it in your hands,” they hold their palms outstretched, pleading now like they never did before. The thick bands of scar tissue encircling their wrists gleam silver in the torch light and Montparnasse turns his face away, heart aching til he thinks it might kill him.  
  
“I’m sorry.” He never thought he’d be eager to die, but it feels a fitting punishment for this.  
  
Jehan wraps their hands around the bars. “So am I,” they whisper, and it’s the flutter of a moth against glass, the tread of a foxes paw at midnight.  
  
When Montparnasse looks up, the door to his cell stands open and Jehan is nowhere to be seen.

 

They kill the tyrant and overthrow Thénardier and his men.  
  
When it's over Montparnasse finds himself standing in a room of gold, the mirrored walls refracting the gleam of riches beyond his wildest dreams. Gueulemer drapes himself in chains and silks, Babet coos over crates of rare manuscripts, Claquesous polishes the hilt of a jewel encrusted dagger.  
  
As he catches a glimpse of their reflection above the throne, Montparnasse’s throat closes up. For just a moment it looked as if he had horns, twisted and gnarled, growing from his forehead.  
  
When the argument arises over who will rule, he’s the only one who doesn’t speak up. When the question of how much of the wealth will be distributed to the people is asked, he stays silent. As the thrill of being on the side of the righteous trickles away, he watches while his friends slowly shape themselves into the thing they’d set out to destroy, and he knows that the witch was right.  
  
Montparnasse rides out from the castle alone.  
  
He sleeps on mossy beds and follows the winding streams through the trees, watches the path of the moon at night and uses the stars as his guide.

The first week he falls from his horse when it catches it’s foot in a rabbit hole. He loses his food supplies in the fall and doesn’t realise until he’s some miles away. The rivers he follows are thick with algae and weeds, some days he doesn’t dare to drink from them. It rains. It rains and rains and rains for days, only letting up so that thick frost can form on the ground, cold sinking deep into his bones.  
  
When he sleeps, his dreams are full of unseen terrors, every sound in the wilds around him turning into a threat that seeps into his unconscious. He dreams of Jehan’s face, the moment they knew what he’d done. Those are the ones that wake him, panting, cheeks wet with more than morning dew.  
  
The wood Montparnasse gathers is always wet.  
  
He’s labouring over a fire pit, breath misting in the cold night air as he coaxes small sparks in the pile of kindling, to no avail.  
  
Something moves in the darkness and he reaches slowly for the sword at his side, the night air is still, the owl that was calling warnings in the trees nearby falls silent.  
  
Jehan steps out from between the trees, and Montparnasse’s hands fall empty at his sides.  
  
In the witch’s eyes are all the darkest parts of the forest.  
  
“I can help you with that,” they speak, and it’s snow falling on a winters night, the fleeting touch of a lover's hand, the beating of Montparnasse’s blackened heart in his chest. “If you want.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> For the Jehanparnasse Week prompt "Magic". Title is from 'Ode to a Nightingale'.


End file.
